JOURNAL

I’m proud to be from New Jersey. Like most proud Jerseyites, I’m a big Bruce Springsteen fan. Every Springsteen song worth its salt is about escaping New Jersey, which I’m also proud to have done.

After college, after a brief and wholly unexciting stint as a financial advisor, and after a good deal of menial labor that became seasonal by my own design, I looked for something else.

I found a job in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming and haven’t left for long since. The main reason for my attachment, I’d have to say, is the likeminded people I get to work with. I get to work and go adventuring with people from Georgia, Detroit, L.A., Seattle – all people with the Springsteenean drive to get out and find something inspiring, fulfilling and exciting in life. We’re a pack of strays, reaping the benefits of this unnamed inherent impetus.

After work, on my weekends – sometimes during breaks – I get to splash around in glacial lakes, explore caves, roam some of the most gorgeous canyons ever carved into this hard earth and sound my barbaric yawp anywhere I please. I come back to my cabin on Jackson Lake, change out of my smelly backpacking gear and serve pizza to people from all over the world experiencing the home I’ve come to know for the first time ever.

I’ve found my kind, found my home, found my adventure. I live the life people work a lifetime to be able to retire into.